20 February 2006Gabi Becker
Escalating Israeli declarations around "final borders" are alarming, particularly in the face of ongoing Occupation pursuits to devour more Palestinian land, control the West Bank, and contain the Palestinian Struggle. Recent announcements, launched during the Herzliya policy conference that ended the day before the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, were not a surprise in the face of the near completion of the Apartheid Wall, confirming Israeli plans to permanently control approximately half the West Bank by imprisoning the majority of Palestinians in walled ghettos. In continuing its current policy and measures, the Occupation seeks to deepen and make official, preferably through negotiations, its de facto annexation of lands between the Wall and the Green Line as well as the Jordan Valley, thus demarcating a Palestinian "state" more accurately referred to as bantustans, ghettos, or reservations. Already, Palestinians are closed-in/out by the Wall, settlements, bypasses, and checkpoints/terminals all the while the Occupation increases its stronghold in areas outside the Wall—that is, Jerusalem, the "seam zone," and the Jordan Valley, the latter two Occupation proclaimed "security zones." Today, the areas between the Wall and the Green Line—the so-called "seam zone"—are de facto annexed, either through their inaccessibility to land owners and farmers, or by the military and court orders that declared them closed or demanding of permits. As the Wall seals the fate of Jerusalem, it also guarantees the annexation of the major settlement blocs of Ma'ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, and Ariel. The Israeli plan is to expand settlements with even greater speed while solidifying the settler linkage between the coast, the Jordan Valley, and Jerusalem, encircling and close-in on the ghettos while targeting Palestinians in the "security zones" with expulsion. The "zones" are expected to be bases for settlement industries, forcing many Palestinians into cheap labor as the Occupation, once again, seeks to ensure dependency with the ultimate goal of breaking the Palestinian spirit, with the "state's" sealed "border" acting as the noose around the Struggle's neck. That is, "security zones" become centers for Occupation brutality and violations, as they represent a huge portion of the West Bank that is closed-off from most Palestinians through gates and checkpoints, where Palestinians going to their lands or villages in these parts are considered "infiltrating" "Israeli-controlled" areas, and where Occupation Forces patrol as they prepare the next attack on the bantustan "state." Meanwhile, international aid agencies knowingly support this under the banners of "humanitarian aid," "work for food," "rule of law," and "democracy building." The Herzliya Conference, attended by the likes of the Occupation's military generals, "Yesha" council representatives (West Bank and Gaza settlers), Knesset members, government officials, university professors, bank representatives (the list clearly overlapping), US think tanks, members of the US Jewish "community," and this year's special guest former US President Carter who stopped by on his way to "observe" the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, all take part in the Conference to make a toast to the past and future of Israeli expansionism. Herzl, the "Founding Father" of Zionism and author of The Jewish State, would be proud. The Herzliya Conference, taking place in Herzl's namesake settlement of "Herzliya"—built on the destroyed Palestinian village of Abu Kishk—resonates similarities to the World Zionist Congresses, the first of which took place in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland and chaired by Herzl himself. But, unlike the Zionist Congresses that took place in Zionism's homeland—Europe—this conference takes place after the Palestinian displacement, and this time the plan is not how to establish a Jewish State in Palestine, but how to bring about the final annihilation of Palestine (under the very cynical rhetoric of establishing a "state"). Two years ago, the Herzliya Conference gained particular attention when Sharon discussed the so-called "Disengagement." This year, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert clarified the Israeli priority: "In order to ensure the existence of a Jewish national homeland, we will not be able to continue ruling over the territories in which the majority of the Palestinian population lives. We must create a clear boundary as soon as possible, one which will reflect the demographic reality on the ground. Israel will maintain control over the security zones, the Jewish settlement blocs, and those places which have supreme national importance to the Jewish people, first and foremost a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty." Under the racist rhetoric of "demographics," "majority" is synonymous with the Zionist motto of maximum Palestinian land with minimum Palestinians, and thus these "territories" that reflect the "demographic reality" are where there is no Palestinian land to take for settlement expansion and annexation. This coincides with the route of the Wall, whose function is to ensure optimal land confiscation and thus the smallest Wall-encircled ghetto, together with the destruction of the majority of Palestinian agriculture and the final isolation of "Greater" Jerusalem from the West Bank. In the above quote, the play on words, on reality, and on history is additionally disturbing in that Palestinians were the majority in their homeland, only to be expelled by Zionism for the sake of ensuring a colonial—Jewish—majority. Those areas where today there is this so-called Palestinian "majority" is in fact where massive expulsion has not taken place, more accurately areas in the West Bank and Gaza where cities, their outskirts, and refugee camps converge, a reality forcefully delineated by over 50 years of Occupation. Meanwhile, focus around "negotiations," "final status," and "statehood" continue to be the mainstay of Occupation under Oslo. While terms remain the same, so does the colonial, expansionist reality on the ground. The various peace proposals that surface remain within this framework, as their distinctions are solely about shifting the borders in different areas and in percentage of lands that would be "security zones" and annexed, and not about the regime that is and will be established under the bantustan state. Olmert also stated that, "We firmly stand by the historic right of the people of Israel to the entire Land of Israel. Every hill in Samaria and every valley in Judea is part of our historic homeland. We do not forget this, not even for one moment…" another reminder that "final borders" themselves are but a means and will ultimately not be final, just as living in a ghetto is not living at all. Some may argue that a more blatant, rhetorical approach is one affiliated with Likud/Kadima and that Labor would push ahead with the same policy of "final borders" through the construction of the Wall without the need to make declarations since the Wall and the Occupation's infrastructure (settlements, bypasses, and checkpoints/terminals) serve the goals of stifling, controlling, confiscating, and eradicating. It is important to bring up the issue of these approaches, if only to make clear that the distinction is in tactic, not in policy or implementation. The Occupation's main strategy has always been to create countless policies of suppression and control where it never had to officially declare anything but managed to implement what it wanted. That is why de facto and de jure have been synonymous in the case of the Israeli Occupation. Over a decade of "peace" has meant the grand scale multiplication of settlements, reaching a horrid pinnacle with the Apartheid Wall as the most concrete manifestation of Occupation control and planned borders. Since the Oslo Accords and until today, Israeli talk of "not being able to rule the Palestinians forever" has been commonplace doublespeak, with a negotiations process of slogans on "self-rule" and "statehood" as a means of camouflaging to the world a widening Occupation. Continuing along the same lines that have worked so well for the Zionist movement since its inception, the Occupation hopes to continue gaining international approval of defining what is Palestinian for the very sake of implicating that anything else is therefore not, reflecting the deep-seated ideological support that exists for the Jewish colonization of Palestine. Need we not remind ourselves that the Herzliya "final borders" speech took place before any Palestinian elections, as an added expression of a plan that has been in full force since 1993 and Oslo, or since the 1967 Occupation and the Allon Plan, or since the 1948 Nakbe, or since 1897 and Basel. In criminal camaraderie, and in a statement that for certain reverberated in the depths of the Israeli public and Israel's supporters at large, Olmert closed his Herzliya speech with a testament to Sharon—the Butcher of Beirut—stating "I hope that we will soon be able to stand before him and tell him: we have walked in your light." Was there any doubt that Olmert, or any other Israeli leader from any other party, would say—or do—just that…
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=9772
